How to Turn Any List Into Google My Maps

Recently I wanted to turn a 100 must-visit spots (opens in a new tab) list from a South Korean tourism website into a Google My Maps map. However, they only offered a PDF with a fancy map or HTML accordion lists with that information. Either format would require a lot of manual work to extract the data and enter it by hand into Google My Maps.

So after some research I found out that you can import .csv files into Google My Maps. That’s an easy job for an AI to turn an unstructured list into a structured CSV file.

I copied the list of places into a text file. They were formatted like this:

Seoul Capital Area
Seoul
N Seoul Tower
Seoul
Gwanghwamun Square / Cheonggye Plaza

After a bit of formatting the output became:

## Seoul Capital Area

### Seoul
- N Seoul Tower
- Gwanghwamun Square / Cheonggye Plaza

Here’s the prompt I used to turn this into a My Maps compatible CSV file:

I have a list of places in @LIST.md - your job is to export a list.csv file in a format compatible with Google My Maps. The file will be used for importing these places into Google My Maps.

You should get back a CSV file formatted like this:

Name,Description,Address
N Seoul Tower,Seoul,N Seoul Tower Seoul South Korea
Gwanghwamun Square / Cheonggye Plaza,Seoul,Gwanghwamun Square Seoul South Korea

Lastly, to import into Google My Maps:

1. Go to Google My Maps
2. Create a new map or open an existing one
3. Click Import in a layer
4. Upload the list.csv file
5. Select Address as the column to position placemarks
6. Select Name as the column for marker titles

And that’s it! Nothing really complicated, but a great time-saver when dealing with lots of places.